SHUT

Thump-thump. Her size six toddler feet hit the floor and my eyes fly open. She struggles to open her door and that gives me the time to roll out of bed, feel for my glasses on the pile of books where they've sat since last night, and stumble blearily down the hall. It's 6-ish AM and my day just started.

 If you're like me your to-do list is jam-packed from the moment you wake up. Mine is a conglomeration of personal goals for myself, kid-related things, business calls to make, and household duties to perform. The way my house is set up I spend most of my day in the kitchen doing various tasks and let's face it, with four kids, most of my day revolves around cleaning up what we just ate or preparing for what we are going to eat. In between that I break up spats, spend cuddle time, play with the kids, and do all that other stuff.

 The great thing about my kitchen is that it has a work station, aka the dumping spot for all things. This work station is rarely organized, but there my computer sits and it is there that I do most of my blogging/emailing/etc. If I've talked to you on twitter you can be 99% sure I'm standing in my kitchen when we're talking. There is a problem, though. Since my computer is so accessible, it is very easy to stay attached to it or even keep it constantly open.

I'm working on giving my kids my undivided attention.  So much of the time I am rockin' my multi-tasking skills and doing three or four things at once.  If I'm not DOING three or four things, I am thinking of at least six.  You know this is true of most moms.  I'm finding that my day and my children's day drastically improves when I imply the undivided time principle.  Basically, I have set times in my day when the computer stays SHUT.  Completely shut.  If I think of something I need to do online, I write it down.  Normally I proceed to lose the paper on which I wrote it down, but that's beside the point.

My undivided times are prior to 8:30 AM {from the time we wake up until then}, lunchtime (about an hour), and from when I start dinner to when the kids are 100% ready for bed.  That doesn't mean that the remainder of my day is spent on the internet, it just means that during those times I won't be on the internet.

I also can't trust myself to just "notndivided check it"; that's why I close the laptop completely.  Have I perfected this?  Nope.  Are their days when I don't adhere to it?  Absolutely, but those days are far worse than the days that I do follow my little system.

Are there any times of the day when your computer is SHUT?